"There are segments of this city where you go to an estate sale and find five TVs and three books."
- Frustrated Kansas City, MO, used bookstore owner Will Leatham, whose business partner Tom Wayne has recently started burning the thousands of books that he can't sell or even give away in Kansas City.
Wayne calls this the ''the funeral pyre for thought in America today''. Okay, but let's be fair here- nobody in Kansas City, Missouri wants these books; not nobody in America. I mean, the point of the article is basically that people in Missouri are idiots, which isn't exactly newsworthy. (I'm sorry, we're not supposed to call them 'idiots'- the polite euphemism is 'people who choose to get their information from television or the Internet instead of books'. So, you know, idiots.) But there are certainly at least a few places left in the United States where people still read books, right? Why not send them to NYC. And if not, he could always send them to us readers in Canada- the only time we ever burn books is when it's really friggin' cold outside!
Anyway, most used book places just throw the books they can't sell in the trash, but good for him for not going quietly into the dark night... A few rabble rousers are good for everyone, especially in this time of complacent indifference.